Hard to believe this guy once sat behind First Lady Laura Bush during the State of the Union address.

Iraqi politician and invasion booster Ahmed Chalabi and the United States are locked in an increasingly bitter war of words and policies.

Chalabi plays a leading role on Iraq's Justice and Accountability Commission, which has been weeding out suspected Baathists - members of Saddam's Hussein's outlawed Baath party - from participating in the March 7 election. Critics and Iraq's Sunni politicians, say the effort is politicized, designed to keep Sunnis out of power and strengthen the Shiite majority's hold on Iraq's government. The Obama administration, eager to see political reconciliation in Iraq, appears to sympathize with that view.

Chalabi; top aide Entifadh Qanbar; and Ali Faisal al-Lami, who heads the commission, have been sending daily email broadsides, denouncing what they say is U.S. interference in Iraq's election. (A bit ironic, since it was U.S. "interference" in Iraq with hundreds of thousands of troops that ended Chalabi's multi-decade exile from Iraq and helped him get where he is now).

Then on Tuesday, Gen. Raymond Odierno, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, told a Washington audience something that McClatchy and others have reported. Chalabi and al-Lami "clearly are influenced by Iran," he said. "We have direct intelligence that tells us that."

Al-Lami, in a statement today, said he was "surprised and dismayed" at Odierno's "inappropriate diatribe."  

"The pique and anger of the US officials including General Odierno’s with regard to their failure to re-introduce Baathists into the Iraqi political process is not the responsibility of the" commission, he wrote. "The efforts of intimidating the JAC are counterproductive." (The statement didn't mention the substance of Odierno's comments about the two men's ties to Iran).

Fast forward to this afternoon, where US ambassador to Iraq Chris Hill briefed the press. He seconded Odierno's comments and expanded on them, noting that Chalabi originally was appointed to a De-Baathifcation Commission by then-U.S. consul Paul Bremer. That panel went out of business two year ago, but Chalabi, unlike the other members, stayed on "in a new committee, to which he was never named," Hill said.

"I don't need to relate to you or anyone else here the fact that this is a gentlemen who has been challenged over the years to be seen as a straightforward individual," Hill added. Ouch. The U.S. government hasn't cut off all contact with Chalabi, but has "kind of moved on," he said. Indeed.